The waters are rising…….

Something strange is happening here. I lived in Britain for about 20 years and never heard much about flooding. There were occasional floods of low-lying areas, but mostly floods, like all other natural disasters, were something that happened in other countries.

But for the past five years or so, it seems as if every time I go on the BBC website I see a story about severe flooding somewhere in Britain. Today it’s Boscastle, a village I used to visit as a child on summer holidays to Cornwall and which was apparently devastated by flooding three years ago. Yesterday it was South Yorkshire. Last week it was pretty much the whole country.

What’s happening here? Is it really happening more than before, or is that just my perception? If it is happening more, is it global warming leading to more extreme weather? Is it greedy developers building on flood plains? Is it people flushing their underwear down the toilet? We need to be told.

Unfortunately, most news items I see present flooding as a simple act of God, and highlight cheerful homeowners ignoring the devastation around them and waving to the camera as they canoe to work in a suit and tie. Yes, fine. British people are great in a crisis. Big news. Didn’t we get over that story in about 1941? How many times must we repeat it? Ugh. What interests me is not the brave, heart-warming acts of stiff-upper-lip, make-the-best-of-a-bad-job British fortitude, but the causes of something that I am sure never used to happen like this before. Anyone have links to some real information on this issue?

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2 Comments

I blogged about the increasing prevalence of flooding in this country yesterday but never expected that Boscastle would get deluged today! Although we have always had extreme weather it is as you rightly point out the increased frequency of such events that is remarkable.

So is this due to climate change? Very probably. The pattern of recent weather fits in very well with what the climatologists have been predicting.